The open-source OpenPKG project released version 2.4 of their unique RPM-based cross-platform multi-instance Unix software packaging facility. OpenPKG 2.4 consists of 562 selected
(from a pool of over 880) packages which include latest versions of
all popular Unix server software. All software is carefully packaged
for easy deployment on 16 different Unix platforms, including FreeBSD
4.11/5.4/6.0, NetBSD 2.0.2, Debian GNU/Linux 3.1, Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 3, Fedora Core 3, SUSE Linux 9.3, Mandriva Linux 10.2 and Sun
Solaris 8/9/10. The major technical efforts for this release were spent
on porting OpenPKG to IBM AIX 5.1 and further improving the Solaris 10
and Debian 3.1 support.
OpenPKG 2.4 available for 16 Unix platforms
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Nothing on openbsd? I almost wonder if that’s a good thing to keep odd builds of software out, but their list seems fairly extensive supporting both of the other major BSDs and some other non-linux platforms as well. Does anybody have insight into this?
The newbs/windows users should be jumping for joy now. This is just what they always wanted. Too bad it’s just RPM. I was never a big fan of RPM. Anyway, it’s not like I couldn’t install RPMs on Gentoo before so this doesn’t seem to be anything that is useful to me but it may make it easier for people using different Unixes and BSDs to get obscure packages, as long as packagers latch on to OpenPKG.
“Too bad it’s just RPM”
Its actually a modofied RPM, as much as we all like to moan about RPM at the time OpenPKG started you weren’t going to find any better PMS (of the software variety of course
)
hey it works, that’s good enough for me!
What’s the difference with autopackage?
open pkg is a collection of packages that can be consistently deployed on many unix platforms. It is server oriented but il also contains plenty of desktop apps.
Autopackage is a packaging toolkit that allows the creation of self contained packages that will install on any incarnation of Linux.
Its actually a modified RPM, as much as we all like to moan about RPM at the time OpenPKG started you weren’t going to find any better PMS
Yeah I read that too but it’s still RPM. The packages are a bit different but they are still using rpm. In fact if you have RPM installed on your computer already you have to refer to OpenPKG by it’s full pathname because they didn’t even change the name from RPM. That’s just pretty dumb and confusing as hell for someone using an RPM distro. This is really only for heterogeneous servers anyway so it’s not like it will be useful to desktop users. There probably won’t even be desktop packages for it.
RPM is the de facto package format today, used by RedHat, SuSE, Mandriva and many others. You obviously never have used OpenPKG before, it installs in a separate prefix, /openpkg. To use it you run a script which sets up the environment with the correct PATH etc so that you don’t confuse the system RPM with OpenPKG. Personally I think it’s a very clean and elegant way to do it.
Why do you post comments about a project you know nothing about? OpenPKG is a very useful tool for some.
what’s wrong with rpm?
We really need an open, cross platform/cross distro package system. Having unique packages for each platform makes life a living hell as a commercial *duck* software developer. It’s very hard to ensure that one package will work on all systems. Standards are much need, and overlooked way to much by the linux distro community. Compatibility is key in the enterprise, and guess where are the money comes from.
yep…I agree. In the enterprise we HAVE to have some type of cross-platform pkg mgt. that is deployable and manageablt remotely. I don’t know if OpenPKG is headed that direction, but it would really be useful if it was.
yep…I agree. In the enterprise we HAVE to have some type of cross-platform pkg mgt. that is deployable and manageablt remotely. I don’t know if OpenPKG is headed that direction, but it would really be useful if it was.
Actually, openpkg can be used in combination with apt4rpm, so yes it is remotely manageable. Is it remotely manageable through a fancy web-based interface ala RedHat network, Sun Update Connection, or otherwise? No. But I’m sure someone could write it without too much work.
On certain platforms (e.g., Linux) what is the advantage of going with OpenPKG over just tracking updates to distro-specific repositories? It seems like the big advantages are more for the marginalized players.
Also, on a supported platform is there any real advantage of OpenPKG over installing the NetBSD pkgsrc tree since I need to build everything from source, anyway?